With NIL and the transfer portal, which gives the head coach more tasks than just the X’s and O’s, Ohio State Head Coach Ryan Day has taken a step back and given up his duties as offensive playmaker before the 2024 season. A responsibility that will now be passed on to the new offensive coordinator Chip Kelly.
Kelly joined the Buckeyes this offseason after serving nearly 14 consecutive seasons as an NFL and college head coach, focusing entirely on calling plays as opposed to the aforementioned new responsibilities as a college head coach after a six-year tenure at University of California.
Day recently sat down with Joel Klatt as part of Klatt’s “Big Noon Conversations” series and asked the Ohio State University head coach if the team’s productive offense will look different under Kelly next season.
“Yeah, I think so. I don’t think it’s going to look drastically different, maybe just to some viewers, but you’re going to see some different things schematically,” Kelly said. “And Chip’s running experience speaks for itself and we have some really good running backs and he’s creative in what he does. What we’ve done here passing speaks for itself, so I think it’s going to be a combination of those things.”
Ohio State has had success in the passing game for many years and currently has ten wide receivers and two quarterbacks in the NFL (six of them in the first round) after the team put up excellent numbers in Columbus.
But in that same time frame, Kelly transformed UCLA into a potent offense, ranking first in the Pac-12 in rushing yards per game the last two seasons and second in the league the two seasons before that. Day and Kelly are now joining forces for the fourth time in their respective coaching careers and will dominate in the air and on the ground.
“But the great thing for me was that I came out of his system when I came here. So we brought with us what Urban (Meyer) “I kind of put those things together in the first few years we were here. And then, as time went on, he did something else at UCLA, we did something else here,” Day explained. “And now we’re kind of coming back together.”
The Buckeyes definitely have the personnel needed to maintain their offensive strength.
Quarterback with dual threat Will Howard joined the team this offseason and the running back duo from Quinshon Judkins And TreVeyon Henderson is considered by many to be the best one-two punch in the country. That paired with her signature talent as a wide receiver means Ohio State’s only task is to update their differentiated system.
“The hard part was he came in right before spring started,” Day said of Kelly. “So we just got it going, laid the groundwork, got some fundamentals straightened out, focused on techniques and things like that. And I think over the next couple of months we’ll really look at what the preseason installation looks like.”
Given the roster and coaching upgrades, expectations for Ohio State next season are enormous, and it will be exciting to see whether their offense in particular can maintain its level when a new sheriff is in charge in town.
